Pricing Games on Classified Inventory Websites

[Muller Toyota]

This is kind of like white hat vs. black hat SEO in my opinion. Black hat will work for a short time but end up costing you everything eventually. White hat SEO might start slow, but it continues to build indefinitely.

You need to educate your customers so that they can identify malicious practices.

Most of my customers appreciate that I am 100% transparent. In fact, I have even won over customers with a higher price because of my honest and straight-forward attitude. They know what to expect from me and they are willing to pay for the honest.

In the long run, the people that use these tactics will lose.

 

[Stu Chapman]

Matt Watson said:

"I also see dealers list their inventory for like 1,000,000 dollars so they have the highest price and come up first. It’s silly but it works. We have ex Internet sales guys on staff that used to over price used cars all the time."

I guess that explains why they are ex Internet sales guys!

 

[Keely (blog)]

I am the Director of Fraud Prevention Strategies and in my world "abuse" is considered fraud and I thought it would be important to weigh in and let the audience here know that AutoTrader.com is aware of these practices and we do care about our car shoppers and their experience. We know that without buyers there are no sellers and its in our best interest to maintain a trustworthy marketplace. We are not turning a blind eye to these practices, we ask our consumers to flag listings that they feel are misleading or fraudulent and we follow up on these reports. The link is at the top of our vehicle detail page and it is labeled “Suspect Fraud”. Please use this tool when you’re on our site and let us know when you find abuse.
Thank you

 

[Travis Thompson]

I was the local cars.com rep for the Columbia, SC area, now I'm the ISM for a Toyota Dealership here, and I will tell you that Cars.com WILL NEVER BLACKLIST A DEALER! Like AD HUSTLER said, they need the dealers way too much and every dealer is looking for a way to cut costs and many GM's don't care what the ISM says ( Thank God I don't have that problem) and are looking for ways to cut money.
Not to mention most Cars.com reps work for the local newspaper anyway and cutting a dealer out of Cars.com is also going to make what few dealers still advertise in the papers, pull out and the Newspaper can not afford that at all!
This is an animal that we are just goign to have to deal with and hope it pisses the customer off so much that they come to me!

 

[ashamed]

regrettably I am an ISM for one of "those" dealerships. I have to say it is an unending battle and YES we were blacklisted! Cars.com pulled our prices and ATC pulled our listings entirely!!! I have to say when they put their foot down I was ecstatic. I am a true believer that as far as the net goes the days of having 4-5 pounders is over. I would rather price the cars to move and have more shots at the back end money. Unfortunatly Im not in charge of pricing and since we lost the battle with cars/at we have pulled prices altogether.